Yeah, it’s unworkable, these ships can carry a limited number of munitions. And once they go through them, then they have to sail to a friendly port to restock, and then come back. And all that assuming that they can even survive the trip at all. The most likely scenario is that their defenses would be quickly overwhelmed, and they never make it through the strait.
damn, sure would be unfortunate if a plucky little group of chill guys decided to block the other strait that allows access to the Suez from the Gulf… nah that’d never happen, that’s too crazy
According to Google, you’re looking at over 1500 mi (assume 400 mi off the coast of Oman, and a straight line to Diego Garcia). if you’re going at 30 knots, which would almost be redlining their engine the entire way burning an ungodly amount of fuel, you’re talking about 40 hours of travel time. Even if it only takes 16 hours to refuel and rearm, which is impossibly fast, every time a ship has to leave the theater it’s gone for at least 4 days.
More realistically:
2,000 mi at 20 knots, which is a more realistic, is 4 days and 4 hours of travel one way.
AB destroyers have at least 90 VLS cells, assume only half of those are anti-air missiles. Google says about a half hour to load each VLS, which means you’re talking at least 24 hours to rearm. If they pack the ship to the gills with anti-air missiles, it’s more like 48 hours.
So you’re talking about 11 days to leave their formation, rearm, and get back.
Most realistically:
The US Navy has already said that they are not going to be escorting ships through Hormuz anytime soon, because even the most brain dead us admiral can do basic math. If you have 15 destroyers, you need to leave 2 or 3 fully armed with each carrier, that leaves 9 or 11 to run escort duty. If 1/3 of them are either going to rearm or coming back, that leaves six or eight to actually escort tankers. Six destroyers 20 miles apart. Could cover the whole straight, with one or two ships patrolling in between, but that still leaves massive gaps. Perfect for UAV, USV, UUVs to slip through.
To paraphrase the IRA: to pull this off the United States Navy would have to be lucky every single time, Iran only needs to get lucky once, in order to stop practically every tanker from taking the risk even with US Navy escorts. Not to mention the fact, that those destroyers would be sitting ducks the entire time.
Do they not have cargo ships that can resupply them while at sea? Or is loading the munitions too complex of a task for that, so they need to be docked?
As far as I know they need to dock, but resupplying at sea wouldn’t really change the overall dynamic that much. You’d still need ships constantly going back and forth to get these resupplies. And the resupplies themselves have to come from somewhere too. Given what we’re reading about existing stocks, it doesn’t sound like that would be sustainable for long.
US Navy have 14 Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships for large scale munition replenishment, those would need to be escorted too, and they would need to have ammo to replenish, and US already burned through quite a bit of their stock in war against Yemen.
Yeah, it’s unworkable, these ships can carry a limited number of munitions. And once they go through them, then they have to sail to a friendly port to restock, and then come back. And all that assuming that they can even survive the trip at all. The most likely scenario is that their defenses would be quickly overwhelmed, and they never make it through the strait.
It’s too bad they can’t rearm at Bahrain anymore lol
Off the top of my head, I’m not sure there’s anywhere to rearm outside of going through the Suez or mabie Diego Garcia.
damn, sure would be unfortunate if a plucky little group of chill guys decided to block the other strait that allows access to the Suez from the Gulf… nah that’d never happen, that’s too crazy
They’ve been hauling back to Diego Garcia so far
That’s like a 2-day trip, isn’t it?
In a best case for the US:
According to Google, you’re looking at over 1500 mi (assume 400 mi off the coast of Oman, and a straight line to Diego Garcia). if you’re going at 30 knots, which would almost be redlining their engine the entire way burning an ungodly amount of fuel, you’re talking about 40 hours of travel time. Even if it only takes 16 hours to refuel and rearm, which is impossibly fast, every time a ship has to leave the theater it’s gone for at least 4 days.
More realistically:
2,000 mi at 20 knots, which is a more realistic, is 4 days and 4 hours of travel one way.
AB destroyers have at least 90 VLS cells, assume only half of those are anti-air missiles. Google says about a half hour to load each VLS, which means you’re talking at least 24 hours to rearm. If they pack the ship to the gills with anti-air missiles, it’s more like 48 hours.
So you’re talking about 11 days to leave their formation, rearm, and get back.
Most realistically:
The US Navy has already said that they are not going to be escorting ships through Hormuz anytime soon, because even the most brain dead us admiral can do basic math. If you have 15 destroyers, you need to leave 2 or 3 fully armed with each carrier, that leaves 9 or 11 to run escort duty. If 1/3 of them are either going to rearm or coming back, that leaves six or eight to actually escort tankers. Six destroyers 20 miles apart. Could cover the whole straight, with one or two ships patrolling in between, but that still leaves massive gaps. Perfect for UAV, USV, UUVs to slip through.
To paraphrase the IRA: to pull this off the United States Navy would have to be lucky every single time, Iran only needs to get lucky once, in order to stop practically every tanker from taking the risk even with US Navy escorts. Not to mention the fact, that those destroyers would be sitting ducks the entire time.
Do they not have cargo ships that can resupply them while at sea? Or is loading the munitions too complex of a task for that, so they need to be docked?
As far as I know they need to dock, but resupplying at sea wouldn’t really change the overall dynamic that much. You’d still need ships constantly going back and forth to get these resupplies. And the resupplies themselves have to come from somewhere too. Given what we’re reading about existing stocks, it doesn’t sound like that would be sustainable for long.
US Navy have 14 Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships for large scale munition replenishment, those would need to be escorted too, and they would need to have ammo to replenish, and US already burned through quite a bit of their stock in war against Yemen.